July 27, 2013
Saturday

In 1983 I attended my first Gravina Access meeting in Ketchikan municipal chambers, representing marine pilots in the region. I did so again in 2013. Thirty years ago, it was not feasible for the community of Ketchikan to build such a crossing. It still is not, for the following reasons.

Since its earliest days, Ketchikan has depended on its narrow but accessible natural harbor for commerce. From the days of saltery and cannery ships, into the late 1800's when ships carried stampeders to the Yukon Gold fields, or in the 1950's through the 1980's when ships carried sawn lumber out of the Spruce Mill and pulp from Ward Cove, right up to todays 1000 foot long cruise ships, there has been one common thread: Access to its port. This may change forever if the bridges now proposed by the State's DOTPF are built.

It is important to understand that maritime shipping around the world is a competitive enterprise, not relying on public subsidies save perhaps for the construction of docks which are recovered in moorage fees. In the present day, Ketchikan competes with other ports in the Alaska and North Pacific markets for such things as the cruise ship business and the export of commodities. The cruise ship business, while seemingly unimportant to some folks in Ketchikan, has brought some distinct advantages to its economy. It employs a lot of people, it brings in at least $200 million a year in revenue to Ketchikan, and it is a growing industry worldwide.

The ships that bring tourism to Ketchikan, in case you haven't noticed, have grown over the years.

This is a reflection of the efficiency of larger ships. For the ports that they visit, these efficencies also apply. For example, the largest ship calling at Ketchikan in 1980 was the SS Rotterdam, bringing in about 1000 people on each visit. The present day Celebrity Solstice brings in as many as 3800 people each visit. Each of these people spends an average of some $200 in Ketchikan on tours or merchandise.

As the size and number of these ships has increased, traffic patterns have evolved that allow the larger ships to enter and leave our harbor through both Southern channels of the Tongass Narrows. During peak periods of marine traffic, all three approaches to Ketchikans harbor are fully utilized with one-way traffic. Safety and efficiency have driven this pattern of marine traffic in Ketchikan. Were it not for the use of all three channels in Ketchikan, it could not handle the amount of shipping it sees today.

The global market for cruise ship commerce is huge, and modern ships are built for the whole market, not just one port. The size of the ships in the Alaska cruise market, for instance, is not dictated by the capacity of Ketchikan alone, but by all its ports, including Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, Seward, Whittier, Glacier Bay, Victoria, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, and Seattle. So Ketchikan cannot realistically dictate that the Alaska market will only handle medium size ships. What it can decide, intentionally or not, is that is will only participate in a smaller part of that market.

Ketchikan, (or its politicians) will decide if it will turn its back on its long history of being a world-class port. If it shrink the access to its port by 30 percent, there is a distinct possibility that the capacity of the port will shrink as well. Marine pilots like myself won't be the ones to make the decision about whether it is safe to maneuver large ships in a smaller port of Ketchikan, or whether is it wise to squeeze a 1000 foot ship that sweeps a path 400 feet wide through a 550 foot wide bridge with a few inches to spare overhead. This decision will be made after a thorough risk analysis by ships captains, ship operators, and insurance companies. They will take into consideration things like fog and reduced visibility, traffic density, tidal restrictions and wasted time getting the ships alongside in the harbor that will no longer have access by the East Channel of Tongass Narrows.

If the F3 bridge proposal goes forward, it will force the Southern access to its port through the West channel of Tongass Narrows. Ships will have to travel through a bridge that is smaller than any other bridge they transit anywhere in the world. It is less than half as wide as the Vancouver Lions Gate bridge, and has less vertical clearance on at least 6 days of each month when the higher tidal range of Ketchikan exceeds that of Vancouver. Ketchikan will be asking these very large world-class ships to thread the needle through a tiny bridge that is smaller than some freeway overpasses in the lower 48. Will they decide to take this very large risk? Or will they instead decide to go around Gravina island? Or will they, as nearly half of the Alaska cruise ships have done in the case of Vancouver, decide to go elsewhere?

Consider, for example, the beautiful natural harbor of Prince Rupert, 90 miles from Ketchikan, (which coincidentally has its airport on an adjacent island but has no plans for a harbor-blocking bridge). It would serve two advantages over Ketchikan, easier access and an alternative to Victoria for some of the ships which must call at one Canadian port to comply with US Customs law. Victoria is nearing saturation as the only Canadian port on the route between Seattle and Alaska. Prince Rupert may be a very good choice to replace Ketchikan for some of the ships .

These considerations must of course be balanced against the demand for easier access and politically-driven, taxpayer-funded Economic Development on Gravina island. Should Ketchikan be sacrificing a third of its present economy for one that is completely hypothetical on Gravina?

Perhaps the former US Senator and Governor Frank Murkowski is right when he suggested recently that it should be a tunnel, not a bridge.

(The DOTPF proposals for the bridge(s) to Gravina seem to compare their bridge design with the Lions Gate bridge of Vancouver , British Columbia. In fact there is no reasonable comparison in size or utility. Besides being massively bigger, The Lions Gate bridge transports some 70,000 vehicles each day between two highly populated suburbs of a large metropolitan city, balancing high demand with a high cost public works project. Gravina access does not have nearly this demand or utility for public funding, and this is why these proposed bridges are so much smaller.)

Michael Spence
Ketchikan, Alaska

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